Jeanson, the creationist who got a Ph.D. to be better able to pretend to be a real scientist, is whining because he can’t get no respect.
Today, creation scientists like me are prohibited from running academic labs. They are denied government funding for their projects. They are forbidden from publishing in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. In short, creation science is excluded from every stage of the scientific process.
To clarify, scientists who happen to be creationists are allowed to run academic labs, to receive government funding, and to publish in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. But only if they never promote creationist conclusions.
Why? Because mainstream scientists are convinced that creationists don’t do science. The specific, technical manifestation of this view is the claim that creation science doesn’t make testable predictions.1 For creation science to be considered science, creationists would have to put in print predictions that future experiments in the lab and in the field could demonstrate to be true or false. In other words, creation science has to be, in theory, able to be disproven. It’s not that evolutionists are waiting with bated breath for creationists to meet this standard. No, they’ve concluded that creationists have not met this standard and never will.
I know the feeling. I can design bridges, I can draw pictures of bridges, I can make predictions that my bridges will not fall down, but do the engineers regard me as a fellow engineer? No. They refuse to let me build my fabulous trans-atlantic bridge, not matter how beautiful my balsa wood model is.
And then they laugh and show that my calculations are all wrong, and do more calculations that show my design is unstable and will fall down. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you, they’re out to get me.
Jeanson has been making predictions. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to make predictions, they also have to be justified and tested multiple times. My balsa wood model of a trans-atlantic model is a “prediction” that could be “tested”, but the fact that it doesn’t fall down when I troop trained mice across it does not mean I am a great engineer. Not even the fact that I dressed them up as clowns matters.
He whines that his mice in clown clothes haven’t been appreciated by the scientific community.
The problem for the evolutionary community? I’ve been publishing, testing, and fulfilling creation science predictions for over 10 years. My early work focused on the origin of species. I made predictions about their genetic rates of change (i.e., mutation rates) and about genetic function.2 I also predicted the genetic mechanisms by which species would form and how fast new species would appear.
That’s nice. I’m sure it impresses the rubes. But when scientists assess his predictions, they all fall apart. Here’s an example from Dan Stern Cardinale:
His books have not been reviewed kindly, either.
Nathaniel Jeanson’s Replacing Darwin could be called pseudoscientific, but arguably this may be unfair. Pseudo comes from the Greek pseudēs for ‘false’ and pseudos for ‘falsehood’. Labeling Replacing Darwin as pseudoscience suggests the participation in a deliberate lie and at the moment I’m unwilling to offer that suggestion. I am happy to grant Jeanson his sincerity. Because the bulk of the errors in Replacing Darwin are errors of omission I lean towards describing it as quasiscientific. Quasi is Latin for ‘as if’ and it is indeed as if what you are reading in Replacing Darwin is science. It is in fact only partially and ostensibly science.
I am also willing to be generous and accept that the majority of these omissions are simply due to an author with no actual expertise in the field he is writing about. The subject of Replacing Darwin is rooted in population genetics, biogeography, ecology, phylogeography, speciation, molecular evolution and systematics, none of which are fields where Jeanson possesses any professional expertise.
I am also unaware of Jeanson ever having someone with any actual expertise in these fields reviewing either his book or any of his articles published on the Answers in Genesis website. As far as I know he’s only had his fellow like-minded creationists chime in on his work or at best someone with some molecular biology background who he has described as a friend and theistic evolutionist. His only attempts at outside reviewers are high-profile popularizers of evolution like Richard Dawkins or P. Z. Myers. With the exception of Jerry Coyne he apparently never solicited a review from anyone with active research in the fields the book covers, despite the fact there are thousands of working population geneticists and systematists out there.
I am embarrassed to note that Jeanson’s Ph.D. was in the field of developmental biology, just like mine, and just like that Intelligent Design creationism fraud, Jonathan Wells (is there something about this field that attracts cranks and kooks? Don’t say yes). The thing is, as I can testify from personal experience, is that developmental biology does not require in depth training in phylogenetics and population genetics. I look at cells and organisms changing over time, I don’t do the mathematics of allele frequencies! So why is Jeanson publishing all these poorly done, deeply flawed analyses of population genetics?
Now I’m worried that if I actually knew anything about materials science & load capacities & stress distribution & geology of the ocean floor, my trans-atlantic bridge might actually have a few problems.
Scale it up, and New York to London, easy!
O Noez. Our minds are closed to the evidence he continues to fail to produce.
“…denied government funding…” These days, unfortunately, at least that part makes him sound like a real scientist.
For now, until Trump’s decides to issue an evnagelical appeasing order executive order on this topic stating that Cretaionism is the official govt science now.
Uncle Sam to Russian Bear : “Lysenkoism?! Hey, check this out and hold my beer!”
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Jeanson states that “The specific, technical manifestation of this view is the claim that creation science doesn’t make testable predictions.” and he cites McLean v Arkansas Board of Education as evidence. But the relevant section of McLean v Arkansas Board of Education states that:
“More precisely, the essential characteristics of science are:
(1) It is guided by natural law;
(2) It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
(3) It is testable against the empirical world;
(4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word; and
(5) It is falsifiable. (Ruse and other science witnesses).”
which is a bit closer to what most of us would assume. But the disingenuous quality of Jeanson’s complaint is suggested by his insistence that he has been denied research funding, publication, etc despite proposing testable hypotheses. Surely this should have been a clue that something else is badly wrong with his work.
I remember doing my master’s thesis. I had to do a lot of research just to see what other people did on the topic. If I didn’t, my professors would have rightly called me lazy. Science is a human pyramid and you have examine what’s already been built before you can seriously suggest overturning it.
Unlike Intelligent Design Creationism, garden variety creationism DOES make testable predictions. And they’ve all been demolished.
“Shoulders of giants..” Isaac Newton or was it Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking?
Ofc, its really based on all the relevant evidence but that is evidence accumulated by a lot of work based on a lot of thought and a lot of maths done over a lot of time.
By a lot of people.
Just show us a physical, walking, talking, manifestation of your god who will answer questions about how it all was done. Quite simple, really. Until then, piss off!
Larry @ 9
Even South Park had a walking, talking physical manifestation of their god (in addition to Jesus, who has a local TV program). If a poorly funded, poorly drawn cartoon can produce a god, what does thst say about the various theists?
At least Ctulhu manifests itself through disasters and madness. I will stick to him/it.
The Mediaeval Intellectual History community wouldn’t listen to my proposal for a fun new century between the Twelfth and the Thirteenth either. The Twelfth-and-a-halfth Century was going to be fantastic. Full of exciting new Mediaeval writers nobody has heard of. Maxentius of Wobbledorf was a real star. His treatise de cochleis sicariis ex spatio externo could have revolutionised whatever field it was written about. Johan the Incontinent was pretty good too. There was even Abbess Fridburga of Clacton, who wrote haunting spiritual poetry about lower back pain as an allegory for the mysteries of the cosmos.. There could even have been a couple of Samurai-Zulu wars to liven it up too. And don’t get me started on the succession of lesbian popes after the great schism of eleventy-thousand and thirteen.
The academic establishment is such a bunch of killjoys.
I remember Harold Camping making a falsifiable claim. He was not happy with the result.
Note to Herman Mays, Jr.: the proper term is “cargo cult science”.
@12. rietpluim : Didn’t stop
himhis cult from bullshitting on tho’ sadly did it? (Quite albiet w much reduced “credibility” even for former followers :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Camping#Aftermath
Grudgiung respect for Campings’ admission :
Ibid.
I have a fantasy of running a train from North American to Europe. By running it across Iceland we’d cross the mid-Atlantic ridge on the surface and could more easily do repairs as necessary.
We’d still need to cross lots of ocean, principally from Iceland to the Faroe Islands and then to Scotland. Assume a tunnel that’s strong enough to not get crushed. (We’d need to keep the pressure inside the tunnel to about one atmosphere to avoid crushing the passengers.)
Could it be a non-so-deep tunnel on an underwater bridge?
What? Nobody takes me seriously?
Oops: “not-so-deep tunnel”.
@15 billseymour
You’d probably have an easier time getting a train from North America to Europe by building tunnels across the Diomede islands.
Alternatively, if you have a tunnel that’s strong enough to not get crushed, you could dig a parabolic arc through the mantle, evacuate it, and build a vactrain. Lots of energy savings to be had with that design.
Today, creation scientists like me are prohibited from running academic labs. They are denied government funding for their projects. They are forbidden from publishing in mainstream peer-reviewed journals.
Yes, and wolverines are prohibited from being barbers. Next!
MattG–
IDists have indeed made non-testable predictions by refusing to define terms (e.g. “specified complexity”). But they still make claims that not only are testable, but were already tested and falsified long before they even thought up the claims by scientists who weren’t even thinking of testing ID when they performed the experiments. The most glaring example was Behe’s use of the bacterial flagellum to exemplify his concept of “irreducible complexity” when the gaping hole in his argument was known to be wrong decades before he wrote about it.
Theistic evolution is non-testable (although again, some versions of theistic evolution make testable claims that happen to be already falsified), but ID isn’t really a subset of theistic evolution. ID is creationism dressed up as theistic evolution. We know this from the Dover court case.
The late Harry Harrison ( Make Room, Make Room, Bill, the Galactic Hero ) wrote a spoof novel, A Trans-Atlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! .
Not here, apparently.
(My neighborhood used to have pet grooming salon named Ahma or “Wolverine”.)
Your bridge should be possible with AI! This, sadly withdrawn, paper showed how an unnamed company invented new materials with up to a doubling of desired material properties using the miracle of AI. Double or quadruple the strength and halve the weight and your cross-Atlantic bridge is a slam dunk! Well, maybe slam, dunk, is not what we meant to say.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/17/mit-disavows-doctoral-students-paper-on-ai-productivity-benefits/
@15, 17, 20, etc
The record-breaking tunnel being built from Denmark to Germany
Woo hoo! 18 km. That’s practically long enough to cross the Atlantic ‽
I just thought of something: maybe my train could just cross the Bering Strait. What’s another 67km?
StevoR @7: Evidently, the phrase dates back to Bernard of Chartres in the twelfth century.
@ ^ Steve Morrison : Cool! Something new learnt today. Oh & popularised by Newton. Thanks for that.
Crossposted with the Infinite Thread (Earth.com)
“Archaeopteryx fossil with soft tissue proves that Darwin was right”
(The reference to Darwin is probably aimed at American readers like Jeanson, my comment)
.https://www.earth.com/news/archaeopteryx-fossil-soft-tissue-flight-evolution-proves-darwin-right/
-I am a bit curious about the statement that “dinosaurs evolved flight twice ” – does that mean our birds have a different ancestor than Archaeopteryx?
@birgerjohansson #27:
I won’t try to ineptly summarize it but the wikipedia entry for archaeopteryx mentions this in a couple spots. I think it’s also interesting to consider how few fossils we actually have compared to how many species we think actually existed in these times. This makes me wonder if our ideas about how many times flight evolved from dinosaurs are a humorously low undercount.
When I took a math class in college one of my teachers was a farmer. He said he used calculus and other advanced math fairly often as a farmer. It maybe wasn’t the only way to do things but since he had the tools he found ways to use them to his benefit.
I feel like science in a general sense is very similar. I’m sure Mr. Self-Proclaimed Creation Science is quite able to use science and even use it with other creationists in ways that are beneficial to himself and others. But just whining that other people aren’t interested in the same things you are does nothing to promote their interest. If he really wants to interest scientists he’s got the education to know how to do that. If he doesn’t want to do that then his complaints are dishonest.
How inspiring that our esteemed host’s bridge design makes no concession to that “Spherical Earth” theory.
Had he put an arch in it, the central stretch would extend beyond the atmosphere, seriously limiting the real-estate value of mid-journey concession franchises.